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I sat yesterday at the scene of a previous poem,
listening to a unctuous woman recite M. L.
Greenwood’s God Bless the USA,cringing at how poorly she scanned it.

Poetry is often the refuge of people stuck
between an old truth and a new expression.
and I respect what they’re grasping for, and I’m proud
to be an American

So I played marches with the band,
sitting under a tent in a parking lot
and listened to a recording of I Am the Flag
the high school JROTC played through speakers
connected to someone’s iPhone, while they
passed a folded flag to anyone
who wanted to touch it.

The ritual would not have been diminished by
Quaker silence, an undeclared question.

He played taps again under the tree,
a sweet, sad, eternal bugle call.

One month to the day
is when I finally dream of him alive
not counting half-awake forgetfulnessI should tell Dad about

We are both in hospital sharing a roomperhaps it is another accident
my reasons are vague, the mild, hopeful complaints
of hospital dramas where the patient goes home

And I cannot remember our conversations
In the dream, I can’t remember how I got therewhich sounds like something serious, actually

Dad and I actually talked, five or six weeks agoabout how tired he was of the hospitalI recalled my own stay, the connectioneven I knew was limited – but all I could offerI almost got away with it. He grinned “but you were getting better.”

He didn’t know what kind of body to expecthe just hoped for legs that worked.

And it’s only when I wake up
that I remember Dad is gone
from the hospital for good
Dad is gone for good.

I find myself in medias res
as one always does in dreams
in a small office, such as
an associate professor
at a branch campus
like the one I attended
would have.

In real life I havea home officemy office at my company’s office
an office under construction at a new locationan office I can borrow at my company’s main office
and the use of a co-working space downtown

So it’s not surprising that I’ve forgotten about this onesince it doesn’t really existbut still I kick myself for having done so
and wonder why I rented the co-working spacewhich really does exist
and what would have happened
to all these books, every single one of them
a Penguin edition, bearing an orange and white spine,
had I not remembered them, or this wonderful view,
this forest outside a picture window.

Still dreaming, but starting to suspect,
I think of Reynolds Price’s poemThe Dream of a House
and compare my middlebrow taste in dream books.

But the principal motivation remains,
the recurring theme in these many
fugues of the subconsciousThis is yours, understand. Meant for you.
Permanent.